Sun-kissed

John was playing around with the camera today and took some fun shots of a sun soaked Sylvie.

At The Zoo

The birthday celebration continued as we met up with the Mass Moens at the Central Park Zoo. This was my first time visiting this zoo, actually I think it was the first time for all of us, and it was really pretty great. But it was HOT. And it was so very disgustingly HUMID. It was a really cute little zoo, a perfect place to spend an hour or two. But man, did I mention the heat and humidity? It was really too much. Here I am putting Sylvie's hair in a ponytail, which she actually AGREED to. You know it's hot when Sylvie allows me to do her hair!

And look how cute it is!


Finally, the Mass Moens arrive!!

Sylvie and I had just been reading Sammy the Seal earlier this week, so she was delighted to see this guy:

We also got a kick out of the sea anemone, which as I pointed out looked an awful lot like the designs on her shirt!

The penguin exhibit:

And the big draw of the zoo, the polar bears! This guy was huge, and was swimming just a foot or two from us. His paw was twice the size of Sylvie's head!

Sylvie also got a huge kick out of these turtles, all lined up and basking in the sun:

We probably lasted about an hour or so, at which point we high tailed it to a nearby restaurant. Here's a group shot (and it really is a group shot, you can see my reflection in the mirror!) :) Sylvie is holding a big plush duck pillow from Uncle Mike and Aunt Sue, which she sleeps with every single night. She loves that thing!

Another Birthday Rager!!

Hardly...but it was a great excuse to get Syl's best buddies Ben and Chloe over to our house for a play date. We started the day by hanging out in the fresh air, but a torrential downpour put an end to that....but Mother Nature did treat us to a rainbow. I don't think I EVER saw a rainbow as a kid...now it seems I see them quite often. Oh well. We wanted to get some cute pics of the kids gawking at the spectacle in the sky, but they really could not have cared less. Besides, despite the rain, it got no cooler...only muggier.

But the kids really did enjoy each other's company...away from the heat and humidity. Here they are playing with some toys and finding the musical instruments...

Drummer boy...

Finger cymbals...

Two-person xylophone...

"Is this thing on?"...


Wackiness ensues...

Sylvie joins in...

After a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday," they dug in to some ice cream cake. Of course, all they adults had some too, but those pics aren't nearly as cute.



Ten minutes later, we were dealing three kids tweaking out on a MASSIVE sugar high. It was fun while it lasted, but sugar highs like that never last long....and they're inevitably followed by a pretty hard crash. And that meant the end of the party. Can't wait to do it again for my birthday next year! I hear three year olds party even harder.

And a reminder about watching the Youtube videos: Make sure to click on the "watch in high quality" link under the bottom right of the video (the link is in blue). This is a new feature on Youtube, and allows you to watch it in a higher resolution, so it's not so pixelated!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Today is John's birthday, so Sylvie and I got busy bright and early this morning on a special birthday project. First we started by digging up as many crafty supplies as we could find:

Next we placed different colored papers in a row. Sylvie carefully helped me put one letter sticker on each sheet, spelling "Happy Birthday".

Then Sylvie dumped all of the collage items (stickers, foam pieces, feathers, sequins) and chose a few to stick on each sheet. She had fun with this for the first 3 letters and then quickly got bored. We had 13 letters in total so it was a looooong project, for both of us!



But it turned out so beautifully that I'm really happy we did it. Sylvie was so excited when we strung them all together and realized that it was a big long banner. She giddily followed me around the kitchen at work looking for a good space to hang it up, just so we could admire it all day. :)

We left work just in time to run to the store and pick out a birthday cake. Syl narrowed it down to 4 different cakes, but managed to settle on 1 perfect little chocolate one. John spent the day in the city with his uncle Mike and family (Mike and John share birthdays, they refer to themselves as the 627 club), so Syl was chomping at the bit waiting for him to come home. As soon as he walked in the door we sang happy birthday and chowed down!

Happy birthday sweetie pie!! xoxox

One year ago today

Being that John and I forgot to take a picture today (whoops!) I thought it would be the perfect time to take another walk down memory lane and check in on Sylvie this time last year. Here she is on June 26, 2007, chowing down on her (STILL) favorite meal, mac-n-cheese.

Right after this photo was taken I took 2 videos of her chatting with my mom. We were trying to teach her how to say "happy birthday Daddy," but she had other things in mind. Hmm, yet another thing that hasn't changed!

Check out those two videos here and here.

Coloring with Grandma Kathy

I think they had a couple of arguments over color choices, but in the end they made a very lovely picture! :)

Introduction

Today Sylvie and I met the 2 month old daughter of a very good friend of mine. I have been dying to finally see baby A and was so blown away by how delightful and perfect and smiley she was, and oh did I mention perfect? Sylvie was pretty thrilled with her too!!

Baby's first pedicure

Cheerios

Today Sylvie played with her Cheerios book while John and I prepared dinner. Aunt Amanda gave her two of these books a long time ago, and while she's always gotten a kick out of reading them and looking at the pictures, it's only recently that she can really play with the books the way they're intended.

Each page has pictures with cheerios incorporated into the scene, like this one above with a big bumble bee flying over pink flowers. The centers of the flowers are cheerios. On some of the flowers the cheerios are missing and the child is supposed to replace them using real cheerios. Sylvie loved it and spent a good 15 minutes with this activity.


At some point I turned and looked at her and realized she had stuffed the entire small bowl of cheerios into her mouth. Two seconds after I snapped this picture she looked at me and with a mouth full of chewed up cereal asked "more Mommy?"

I refilled her bowl and she was able to fill in all the spots on the Cheetahs:

A tasty reward for a job well done:

The Bottle Fairy, part 2

So before Sylvie woke up this morning John and I went outside and created a little scene for her to find. We started with some feathers and glitter on the front steps (because everyone knows that fairies leave trails of feathers and glitter!):


We then put her toys down and sprinkled some more glitter all over the place. It's impossible to tell from these pictures but it really truly looked like a magical scene from a fairy tale. The sun was shining so brightly and as soon as you opened the front door all you could see was glitter everywhere and the light just bouncing around in every direction. John and I were so excited for Sylvie to see it, because even WE were impressed with how magical the glitter looked.

We went into Sylvie's room and found her just waking up. We asked her if she remembered who came to her house last night and after about 2 seconds she got a big grin on her face, and immediately took off running towards the front door. I'm pretty sure that this picture is my favorite one from the entire experience:

Her first glimpse of what the Bottle Fairy left for her:


She didn't even notice the presents, she was far too captivated by the feathers and glitter:


We finally convinced her to open the presents, which she was pretty happy about!


But really, we could have just left the feathers and glitter for her to find and she would have been deliriously happy. As soon as she opened the last present she went right back to playing with the sparkly feathers.


To say that my house is now covered in glitter, like from ceiling to floor, would be a gross understatement. I'm not sure if I can even convey how much of it is around. I have a feeling the next tenants in this place will still be finding glitter long after we move out!

And by the way, the bottle weaning really went beautifully. She asked for a bottle once or twice in the days after, but she was always perfectly happy just accepting a sippy cup of water. And now I don't have to worry so much about her teeth rotting while she sleeps, or her doctor giving me yet another thing to feel guilty about. Phew.